Welcome

I am on maternity leave from February 2019 until the end of the year for many aspects of this work, although the Summer camp is running as usual. Please do get in touch if you would like to register your interest for the future for our gatherings. With love Jill

A warm welcome to this work of honouring our daughters as they grow up and deepening our journeys as women as we do. We celebrate and honour the potential that initiation into womanhood brings to find out more about our unique gifts. We seek to find ways that we can feel really supported, girls and mothers alike, to bring our lights to the world. I feel so passionate about the value of this work for our individual health and happiness and also for the regeneration of healthy culture at this time.

The regular gatherings support natural, whole and authentic self expression in our girls and ourselves. The gatherings are for mothers and guardians of 8 to 13 year old girls, and the girls themselves. We call them the lodges because in indigenous times the women gathered to share knowledge, wisdom, experience and support the community in the community space, often called a lodge.

We weave together circle, education, nature awareness, community and ceremony. We are a team of passionate and committed mothers and grandmothers. We have the greatest respect and acknowledgement for the wisdom and we all carry and welcome your experience into our space. The days are fun for the girls, holding a strong underlying intention of respect and celebration for the feminine.

Please see below for dates and booking. To read more about the vision that underlies the work, or for a welcome letter for your first gathering please follow the links below.

lodge dates

10AM - 3.30PM

BRIGHTON.

£30 PER MOTHER DAUGHTER PAIR.

CONCESSIONS AVAILABLE

Currently on maternity leave

a FATHER'S WELCOME

I believe that the work of integrating rites of passage for our young people has its roots in the homebase and family system. Women and men alike can struggle with what a child's puberty can bring up and experience a lack of support. "A Father's Welcome" is an occasional men's circle for fathers of pre and teenage girls, held by a woman of the Welcoming daughters team and an experienced male facilitator. It is an opportunity to explore the issues that may arise at this time with care and support. We will create time and space to enter into dialogue about the potential of a father's role at this time to nourish, bless and support his daughter as she moves into her womanhood.

Please contact me if you are interested in this work as we are gathering a group at this time to move forward with.

Summer camp 2019

29th august - 1st september 2019

We warmly invite you to our summer camp for mothers and daughters to be on the land and deepen into our shared experience. The intention is to offer our daughters a real sense of blessing for who they are, unique and separate to us. To impart to them some of the magic and magnificence of womanhood and our capacity for connection with ourselves, one another and nature. We will hold ourselves with the same love and regard, honoring our own journeys as women. We gather in community to address the questions about how we can best serve the initiation of our daughters and tend to what might not have been possible for us, remembering our own wisdom.

A Taste of our fun, creative and informative program

We have many delights planned for our time together, weaving together time in circle, deep nature connection, arts and crafts, story telling, singing and drumming, ceremony and the gift of time with ourselves and one another. Our program is fun, creative, and informative and rooted in healthy community.

In gentle and age appropriate ways, we will explore the cycles of life and the wisdom of these phases using art and stories. We will honour the girls as they transition through middle childhood. They will have the opportunity to participate in circles and other activities that allow them to engage with the women's mysteries in the way that feels right for them. We will work with deep nature connection and practices that open up our senses.

There will be sessions with skilled and compassionate facilitation for mothers without our daughters present to explore our journeys as women.

Together we will remember and celebrate our wisdom, offer a taste of the healthy feminine to our daughters and nurture ourselves. We will hold our vision of creating a space where all of us is welcome and foster the opportunity for our girls to stay in touch with their own powerful inner knowing of what is right and feels authentic to them.

The program is designed for 8 to 13 year olds and their mothers. You know your daughter best and if you feel your daughter may fall outside this age range but you are drawn to this please do get in touch.

We will be camping in gorgeous Sussex countryside together, with basic facilities. We will share responsibility for the running of the camp, including preparing food collectively and sharing the day to day tasks of tending and caring for ourselves.

The intention is to offer our daughters a real sense of blessing for who they are, unique and separate to us. To impart to them some of the magic and magnificence of womanhood.

DATES

29th August - 1st September

2019.

COST

£520 per mother daughter pair.

Concessions and payment plans provided on request.

All meals and snacks included.

WHO RUNS IT?

You can read about me elsewhere on this site, but the essence is I am a mother, acupuncturist, doula, Shadow Work coach and workshop leader with many years of experience working with women. I co founded the Brighton Red Tent, work as a Women in Power facilitator, and created and deliver the 'Welcoming our Daughters at the Threshold of Womanhood, Welcoming Ourselves' programs with amazing collaborators.

Samsara Tanner is an experienced Doula, childbirth educator and rites of passage facilitator for women and girls. She created and ran a program for many years in Australia called "personal Journeys" for primary year old girls, celebrating their passage from young girl to maiden. She is a Grandmother, an elder and wise woman of great love and experience. Find our more about her here

Anna Richardson has many years experience as a nature mentor and has worked extensively with adults as a foraging and bushcraft instructor and forest school trainer. Her passion and speciality has been facilitating connection to the plants through foraging and journey work. She has worked with many children in nature over the years and watched them grow and thrive.

Agnes Ashbell works with children, young people and adults, as teacher and mentor, inspiring trust and confidence, looking always to draw out the individual’s gifts and engage directly with the needs underlying and driving behaviours, to cultivate the self-compassion necessary for healing, growth, and a new sense of possibility to arise. Drawing from a broad skill base as a teacher of yoga, meditation, and English, as well as outdoor educator, and adventure professional in a variety of disciplines (on land, river and sea), she has focused her energies primarily on those most challenged by cultural, social and economic forces beyond their power to control. From her training in Reality Therapy and Shadow Work, as well as with the Helpers’ Mentoring Society and the 8 Shields Institute (now known in the UK as the Nature Connection Network), she brings together the insights of modern psychology with those of ancient, indigenous earth-based cultures and lineages from around the world; methodologies and ways of working that she weaves into her work, according to the need of the moment. She knows the transformative power of wild, natural places and she brings an elemental approach to her facilitation - whether it be with adult men serving long sentences within prison walls, or out with a group of teenagers, soaking wet and furious out on the mountains - bringing people into deep, revitalising connection with each other, with nature, and, most of all, with themselves.